Got BxR?

I BxR only if I remember to do it. Some people say that it's wrong to BxR, but BxRing doesn't involve hacking your Xbox or modified content or any network cheating or anything. In a few hidden posts on Bungie dot net, Bungie employees have stated that they believe that weapon glitching is considered cheating to them, but hardly anyone knows about that. The most people read about cheating is usually the Cheating FAQ on Bungie dot net, in which weapon glitching is not mentioned and it is stated that you won't get banned for superjumping (though most people don't like it when people superjump, so I don't try it because I don't want to offend their conscience).

Sure, Bungie employees have posted in their forums as replies to people that they consider weapon glitching to be unsporting, but they haven't made any official, front page announcements about this---they haven't even put it in their FAQ.

The fact is that most of the Halo 2 community considers weapon glitching
sporting, because they don't know that members of Bungie Studios consider it
cheating.

When a player utilizes the bug, they aren't doing it to get an unfair advantage over people, they're just playing to win and using a common technique that happened to not be intended in the game.

What about the n00b combo? It's been said that it's more powerful than they intended to be, and what about some tactical jumps or slide jumps that weren't intended to be in the game, are these outlawed too? Because there hasn't been a front page announcement or a message in one of those "Did you know?" things you see when you wait for a match, saying that weapon glitching is bad, it's mostly unknown.

Tell someone who doesn't know about it that exploiting the bug of weapon
glitching is considered cheating by Bungie Studios, and they most likely won't
believe you, unless someone has given them multiple links to the undercover
posts in the Bungie Forums.

Many Halo 2 websites geared towards those on LIVE mention weapon glitching as a technique just like slide jumping or crouching while meleeing to dodge the enemy's melee is a technique. They don't know that the creators of Halo 2 are anti-weapon glitching, so they don't have a guilty conscience about it or do it because it's some sort of "forbidden art."

The point is that the general consensus is that exploiting the bug of weapon glitching is sporting, and hardly anyone thinks twice about it because Bungie (mad props for creating the best game) hasn't tried to announce that they think it's cheating.

Exploiting bugs has been a part of competetive video game play (for example fighting games), and it hasn't been ever considered wrong to do this, though, since Bungie regulates their matchmaking system and who gets banned for cheating, maybe if you haven't mastered weapon glitching yet perhaps consider not mastering it, though it's fully up to you.

I fully respect Bungie, and I actually don't weapon glitch that much, because I
was one of the lucky few who had a friend let me in on the secret that they some of them think it's illegal in matchmaking before I
developed weapon glitching into my bag o' tricks.

I can't get angry or offended if someone used weapon glitching against me, because weapon glitches were well-established as legitimate techniques long before Bungie "sorta" "announced" otherwise.

The only front-page mention of it I've seen was a joke about how a Bungie employee actually uses the BxR. (The joke was calling him a hypocrit).

Still, they are in charge of matchmaking, and I respect people who beg to differ
on the subject of this post, but if Bungie was really passionate about the
weapon-glitching, I believe they should either be really up-front about their
position and be committed to it... but from my observation their staff is at
least slightly divided in their beliefs on this technique, and if they can get
every member of their staff to be dead-set on actually announcing it, including
putting a thing in that "Did you Know" box about how exploiting weapon glitches
is bad, there's a whole lot of a better chance of people knowing their position,
let alone follow it.

As for me, I'm going to just play with my instincts with the existing skills I have so far, be it the smg + plasma rifle combo, crouch-melee-ing, and just maybe the seasonal BxR.

Cheap is Relative

Let's face it, "cheap" is actually relative. There's a few things that are wrong and actually are cheating such as modding or using networking things (pretty much anything that isn't a part of the game in the raw)... I have a few choice things I'd say about how dumb it is, but I'll save that for another post. Don't get this blog post wrong, I'm talking about techniques that are attainable with a plain Xbox and a plain Halo 2 disc, nothing added.

This one is about how anything that gives you an advantage can be considered "cheap". One that quickly comes to my mind is using the shotgun. When a player grabs the shotgun, what runs through his mind is probably "That's a good weapon, and I want to help my team or myself win." So, since he is playing to win, he will of course, pick it up, unless he doesn't like the weapon. When people become angry that someone uses the Shotgun, it is because using the Shotgun goes against their own homemade rules that they want to put on everyone else. Another example is the n00b combo, slide jumping, tactical jumping, sweep-sniping, using a particular strategy... well, let's face it, if it works, it can be considered "cheap", and people can get mad at you for it.

The only reason they're mad is because it works. Anything that works. Using a shortcut when taking the flag home instead of taking the long route like the enemy wants you to. The reality is that excepting things that are not a part of the original game disc, or maybe at some LANs , you have no place to decide what is legal or not and cannot expect the opponent to simply stop "crouch-meleeing" just because you told him to.

Tip for Teams: Steal Each other's Kills in Halo 2

The accusation of "You stole my kill" to a teammate may lead to team members holding off on assisting other players in a game of Team Slayer. I'd submit that it doesn't matter which person on your team the game attributes the kill to. As long as it's a point for your team, it did its job. Imagine how much faster your team could get points if all four members shot at one target at a time! You could kill the enemy almost instantly, which means that the person he was firing at will have less damage and will live longer. Which person the game attributed the kill to is not so important that one must hold back or complain if someone killed the person they were dueling. In essence, you wanted the point for your team, and your teammate helped you reach your goal.

Imagine if one particular teammate did such tactics that were helpful to their teammates that didn't reflect his or her score. A teammate could be calling out enemy locations, driving the Warthog so the gunner could get kills, or dual wielding Plasma Pistols in order to get as many enemies' sheilds down as possible for teammates to pick up. All of those tactics accelerate a team's point-getting, yet by the postgame carnage report no one would know that this player was even helping his team because his score wouldn't be high.

A team works best when players care more about winning as a team than showing off and getting glory and attention.

Xbox 360: Faulty Reputation

The Xbox 360 looks pretty cool to me, but with me it has a bad reputation. Here's why:

1. Many people who got the 360 ended up having it fail and ended up in a Customer Support nightmare. Some recieving 360s back that had different profiles than the one they sent to support.
2. The Xbox 360 was fun to play at the In-Store displays, but now almost every Video game store in my area that has a Xbox 360 on display for playing demos is either "unable to read disc" or is not operating. One of the many store owners told me that the Xbox 360 on display is "broken". There's PS2's in In-Store displays that are still operating, and they're old! If the 360's in the store are doing this now, imagine what one 36o would be like in my house.
3. $400 is a ridiculous price.
4. I doubt they have my best interests in mind, they just want to make money. Let's look at the facts: The 360 was really faulty when it came out, In-store displays of it are failing to work, the Nintendo Wii is coming out at $250, and yet the 360 hasn't lowered its price. I hope it figures this out or it would have bad business. C'mon Microsoft, you're the experts! I know you can figure this out!

Xbox 360: Premium and Core? more like "Ripyouoff"

The Xbox 360 has been featured in two packages: the "Premium" $400 System, and the "Core" $300 System. This is no new information, and when I was reading about the "Premium" System I sensed something was fishy when I read that one of it's cool, different features was "and, it comes with a removable Hard-drive!". Wait a minute, the fact that the Hard-drive is removable, is cool, but I couldn't understand the sheer excitement of it coming with it since I consider a Hard Drive to be just one of the main components of the console.

It turned out that the "Core" system didn't come with the Hard-Drive! Microsoft is trying to rip frugal people like me off because as soon as I get a "Core" system, I'd have to buy a $100 Hard Drive in order to even play games, and end up spending more money on Xbox 360's peripherals than I would of had I bought the "Premium" System. My opinion is that the "Premium" System should change its name to "Core" and the "Core" system should change it's name to "Incomplete" System. In addition to this, both should be called the "Way too Expensive" system. I'm sorry, I'm neither willing nor able to spend $400--I mean $399.99--on a video game console.

Halo 3 Swedish Scans Published Elsewhere

I saw in the main community I am a part of and I visit's forums a link to a gamespot story about Halo 3 pictures being posted with a link to another forum. I'll just give the link straight to the Halo 3 pics.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=126050

Here's Joystiq's story on it:

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/10/27/halo-3-info-leaked-in-portuguese-from-swedish/


If you visit Bungie.net you'll notice that they do say that these are actual pictures, and I was almost tempted to not look at them so I would be surprised when it comes out, but I couldn't help myself. Anyway, the text is in sveedish! but the pictures speak for themselves no matter what language.

NOTE: These are probably from a beginning build of the game, so expect for things in the game to be different when Halo 3 comes out. (Remember how Halo 2 changed from the E3 trailer to the actual game? This kind of change is normal and just fine... the way it should be. Expect the same difference in Halo 3! It's like art.)

Important for all Halo 2 Communities

Here's something that I think is important for all Halo 2 communities to know! My advice is that someone not being in your group or clan is not a good reason to not play with them. I've seen a long time ago that groups will boot people from their party only because they're not in their group. Go ahead and boot someone if you have an actual reason, but with a "you're no good because you're not one of us attititude", they're not going to get very many new members to their group are they?

A Successful BTB Skirmish Game (it's true!)

I had a great time last night when me and a crew decided to enter the playlist "Big Team Battle Skirmish" aka BTB Skirmish. I know what you're wondering what I was thinking, because I too have been in laggy Big Team Battle games in the past, but this one worked out really well.

It was Assault on Headlong.

It was pretty cool, our team played defense first and after two sucessful defensings and one unsuccessful (offendings?) offensive strike, because I decided to try a strategy a friend told me about where you rush with the bomb through the teleporter, jump down, and enter the base within the first 20 seconds of the game by yourself and arm it while the enemy is still getting it's weapons, it didn't work because there was someone at the arming position. However, if I had waited to have a few people on my team catch up with me, it probably would have worked!

The next offensive round I decided to let someone else hold the bomb. It was really exciting when my teammate was arming the bomb and I was fighting to keep the enemy team from running up the ramps in a rush to stop him. Our team worked together and managed to protect the arming area while STO1C 1 armed the bomb! Even if we weren't successful in arming it, it would've been a good game anyway.

The secret? Entering with a full team of 8 or maybe even 7.

Below is a link to the stats of the game. You'll notice that there's some sketchy names of some of the people on the other team. When I see people with bad gamertags, I kinda feel sorry for them because when you call Xbox LIVE customer support, the first thing they ask is "What's your problem?" and then "What's your gamertag?". Awkward! (for those with bad gamertags), but since I had a good gamertag I got the pleasure of shortly explaining that it's my initials combined with an extra sound to create the sound "ess detective"). So leaving the feedback "Bad Name" on someone with a bad name, might actually be doing them a favor!

http://www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStats.aspx?gameID=588360261&player=SDtektiv

6 Theses on Halo 2 Gaming Communities

I've been in a few Halo 2 Communities, and I've seen some things that a lot of them do that, in my opinion, can cause them to fall apart, and so I'm just making this up as I'm typing this, but here's a few things I think that members and leaders of communities need to look out for and know about.

I haven't actually been the named leader of any particular group, so I've mostly seen it from the members' perspective.

Playing on LIVE and having a good time should be the most important thing
People join groups to have fun and have a good time, so make sure that comes first. This should be more important than the members posting a lot on the forums and stuff. This brings me to my next thesis:

Members of Groups should not be told that they "must be active on the forums"
If you want members of your group to be on the forum, there's a few things that you can do to make them feel welcomed and make them want to visit the forum without making them feel it's their duty or something. For example, if you have a lot of members but hardly any post in your forums, and you want to get your forums going, just hold a Halo 2 Xbox LIVE event through a forum thread and tell your clan and friends about it and encourage them to sign up. If you have enough people on your forums, just inviting people to visit it occaisonally will be enough to keep it active. If you tell people they aren't active enough on the forum, this will lead to people posting a lot for the sake of saying they're active. It's about quality, not quantity, and in fact MOST PEOPLE DON'T JOIN HALO 2 COMMUNITIES TO CHAT-IT-UP ALL DAY ON THE COMPUTER, THEY JOIN TO PLAY SOME GREAT HALO 2!

*Ahem, excuse me, I'm being rather ornery today for some reason. (I'm not normally like this)

Make the purposes of your group well-established
If the purpose of your group happens to be to "chat-it-up all day on the computer", make sure there's a section of the site that says this, or you'll just end up being frustrated that people aren't posting so much, they're actually playing Halo 2 (go figure). It is good for people to know why you wanted to start the group, and it's pretty cool reading about why the group was made.

Establish your standards and stick to them
If you don't want people who like to cuss in your group just make sure that in the "rules" section of the website you say "Cussing and Lewdness is not allowed". This way, you will attract people who don't like cussing and repel the interest of those who like to cuss and make lewd jokes. It's not being mean, it's just that they can go to a different Halo 2 community if they don't like the rules. It's also good to establish if cussing is allowed as well, so that you don't end up with people complaining about the cussing if the group doesn't care about it. You must say whether or not sexy pictures are okay to be posted in the forums, because it's a big enough deal to people that they will leave and find a new place if they don't like the pictures.

It's just as important to stick to the standards, because if you allow the standards to change, then the people who joined your group back-in-the-day because they liked the standards will leave the group and look for a new one if the standards change.

Events keep your group alive
I'm not saying you should have an event every week, but if you leave it open to members of the group and say it's okay and encouraged that members of the group can hold events, then your group will be living, we will play with each other, and, guess what? We'll visit the forum because we want to!

Members should give public praise and private criticism
The last thing you want is for someone to post something bad about another member in the public forum. This helps no one. Members (and leaders) should first send private messages to each other if they have beef with someone, and if this doesn't work they should send a private message to the leader of the group, and never a public post about it; unless the public post is about something a lot of people have done and isn't naming any specific people. Members should be encouraging to other members, but if a Leader gives praise to someone for an accomplishment, and another member does the same accomplishment but doesn't get praise, the member might be offended.

Well, that's all I have to say about this, please note that this is only my opinion, and I've mostly been a member so if you're a community leader it's up to you to pick and choose which parts you agree and disagree with, and good luck leading!

Make the most of LIVE and Join a Halo 2 Community!

Why?
I have had LIVE since February, and I cannot stress how important it is to you if you want to have a good time on Xbox LIVE to join a Halo 2 community! Let's be honest, there are lots of jerks out there, and there are nice people too. This has led me to appreciate the kind people you run into on LIVE. Something that I do sometimes is if I'm playing a playlist that is a team sort of playlist and let's say it's me, a friend, and the other two people on our team are random people we got matched up with. If the game goes well, or if we get along really well with the random people, I'll ask them if they'd like a party invite. In the postgame lobby of a game, you can actually invite anyone who's still there without putting them on your friends list.

You don't have to guess which playlist they want to play, and if you're the sort of person who's wary of entering a playlist with different numbers next to your names (ranks), you don't have to worry about that. Plus, you can rest assured that every member of your team will get along with you and will have good teamwork (of course assuming that's the reason you invited them). And you don't have to worry about getting a deleveler on your team. If these games go well, add them to your friends list!

Now, you could, in theory spend lots of time doing this in order to get lots of friends but, fortunately you also could just join a Halo 2 community, or maybe even a couple with one being one you are most a part of. It's like someone did all the work finding nice people for you!

What exactly is one of deez pleez?
Halo 2 communities often have their own websites with forums, news and events going on. You can visit their forum and look for a thread called "XBL Gamertags" or something like that, or start your own thread about it and you can write down their gamertags to send friend requests, but be sure to say where you saw their gamertag because I know I usually don't accept random friend requests. Often times they will have a clan attached to their community in which they might have events from time to time.

It's like their own personalities or something
There's all sorts of different Halo 2 Communities. So be sure to look for one that shares the same beliefs and importances as you. There are groups in which whether you win or lose a match is the most important part of their lives, there's groups of jerks, but also there are groups of nice people and people who are there to have a good time. In any case, make sure that whichever group you want to join, look at their "about us" section if they have one or ask the leader of the group if the group is right for you, because just like people, groups each have their own personalites and rules to them. Some groups have Halo 2 emblem requirements, some groups have restrictions on BxR and BxB and some don't. So be sure to check them out and if you are still having trouble finding one, you can leave a comment and I'll give a few links.

Where to start?
Well, I'd suggest doing a search for them or asking someone you've played with on LIVE about their clan or community. Be sure to check them out and if you are still having trouble finding one, you can leave a comment and I'll give a few links.

Favorite Witty Halo 2 LIVE Quotes

Even though there are the occaisonal uncreative greifers churning out the same unoriginal vile things, there are also many smarter and better things that can be said, some of which are quite funny and thought provoking! Here's a few that either me or someone else came up with, and you're welcome to comment on these or tell me a few of your own favorite Halo 2 LIVE quotes.

"Sorry if I stole your kill and you're welcome if I helped you." -GarbageMan77

"So anyway, I'm pretty relaxed, though I play to win, but for the joy of the game, not for my identity or a shiny number next to my gamertag which will fade away!" -SDtektiv

"If your greatest concern is the outcome of this match, your life is far less complicated than mine." -SDtektiv

"Because you beat me, you automatically called me a n00b... does this mean that you believe that you are only good enough to beat n00bs?" -SDtektiv